The Chinese online advertising market hit 75.3 billion yuan (US$12 billion) in 2012, but its growth will slow in the long term due to the maturity of the technology and the early development of the mobile online ad market.

Top 5 Internet advertising platforms in China by revenue.

In a statement on Thursday, Chinese research firm iResearch reported that the local market for online advertising grew 46.8 percent year-on-year in 2012, a slower growth compared with the 57.6 percent year-on-year growth experienced in 2011.

Growth for the online market in China will continue to slow in the upcoming years. iResearch predicted that the market will grow at 36 percent in 2013 to reach 102.39 billion yuan (US$16.3 billion), and at 34 percent in 2014 to reach 137.16 billion yuan (US$21.8 billion).

iResearch said that online search advertising continued to make up the largest portion of the market at 34 percent, up from 33.5 percent in 2011.

However, the share of advertisements on e-commerce platforms grew the most, up 5.8 percentage points to 23.3 percent in 2012. The growth of advertisements on independent video was highlighted as well, as it increased 0.6 percentage points to 7.7 percent.

The only journalist in the team without a Western name, Yun Qing hails from the mountainy Malaysian state, Sabah. She currently covers the hardware and networking beats, as well as everything else that falls into her lap, at ZDNet Asia. Her RSS feed includes tech news sites and most of the Cheezburger network. She is also a cheapskate mas...
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